No Time Like The Present by Nadine Gordimer

By Rabia Ahmed – 

A parallel history from the author of ‘The Conservationist’

“I am no stranger to censorship, living in South Africa,” wrote Nadine Gordimer reviewing Salman Rushdie’s ‘The Satanic Verses’ for the New York Times in 1989.  “At various times, three of my own books have been banned.”

Raise your hands if that rings some bells, bells that sound suspiciously like Geo, Malala or YouTube. Gordimer was born in 1923 near Johannesburg in South Africa to Jewish parents during the Apartheid years.  A close friend of Nelson Mandela, she was one of the first persons to meet Madiba when he returned home after twenty seven years in prison.

In 1964 Mandela gave a statement from the dock which was edited for him by Gordimer. This statement later became recognised as one of the greatest (and longest) speeches of the twentieth century, known as ‘I Am Prepared to Die.’ In this speech Mandela said, “I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal for which I hope to live for and to see realized. But, My Lord, if it needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

On the 11th of August 1947 Jinnah gave a speech which could  have been called ‘You are Free and Equal’ in which he said that, “You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in this state of Pakistan…every one of you, no matter to what community he belongs, no matter what his colour, caste or creed, is first, second and last a citizen of this state with equal rights, privileges, and obligations.”

Pakistan’s history seems to have been running a parallel course to South Africa’s, and throughout this book you will find eerily familiar social and political problems, both past, present, and possibly future; that is why I recommend this book by Nadine Gordimer which, sufficiently removed in the distance of Africa, nevertheless reflects back upon ourselves.

Gordimer is a Nobel Laureate in literature (1991) and a joint winner of the Man Booker Prize in 1974 for ‘The Conservationist.’ She is the author of fifteen novels, more than ten volumes of short stories, and three non-fiction collections. She achieved her first published work, a short story for children, in 1937 at the age of fifteen, and her first novel ‘The Lying Days’ was published in 1953. ‘No Time Like the Present’ published in 2012 is Gordimer’s latest novel.

Now ninety, Gordimer has led a full life.  After a secular (I love this word; it gets the most delicious reactions in Pakistan) upbringing, the political atmosphere of her time and her mother’s views on the matter drew her, a white woman, into the anti-apartheid movement and she joined the African National Congress (ANC) when it was still an outlawed organisation.

She helped its members actively, often putting herself at risk.  This book draws a lot from those personal experiences of racial struggle; the narrative is about Jabu, a black woman unusual in being a successful lawyer.  Jabu is married to Steve Reed, a white man and the son of Christian and Jewish parents, who studied to be a chemical engineer and now is an academic in the free state of South Africa, but at one time was employing his skills to make explosives against the apartheid regime.

This interracial marriage straddles apartheid and freedom from colonial rule to freedom in South Africa, which carries so many parallels to the sub continent with its own century of British rule and the eventual struggle for freedom ; in both places when freedom finally arrives, there is euphoria, closely followed by disillusionment, and trouble once again.

Gordimer writes about divided opinions, the interlacing of personal lives within the political turmoil, layers upon layers of relationships, the divisions that diversity creates and history forges, they’re all in her writing with the fluency of thought and the genuineness of experience. It’s a brilliant novel, highly recommended.

The writer is a journalist  based in Lahore. She tweets @RabiaAhmed4